The sloppy snow went away at last, and the reluctant frost was forced to follow, yet not before it had wreaked its spite by softening all the country roads into dismal swamps of mud, and heaving into painful confusion of holes and hummocks the pavements on Thessaly’s main streets. But in compensation the birds came back, and the crocus and hyacinth showed themselves, and buds warmed to life again along the tender silk-brown boughs and melted into the pale bright green of a springs new foliage. Overcoats disappeared, and bare-legged boys with poles and strings of fish dawned upon the vision. The air was laden with the perfume of lilacs and talk about baseball.
From this to midsummer seemed but a step. The factory workmen walked more wearily up the hill in the heat to their noonday dinners; lager-beer kegs advanced all at once to be the chief staple of freight traffic at the railway dép?t. People who could afford to take travelling vacations began to make their plans or to fulfil them, and those who could not began musing pleasantly upon the charms of hop-picking in September. And then, lo! it was autumn, and young men added with pride another unit to the sum of their age, and their mothers and sisters secretly subtracted such groups or fractions of units as were needful, and felt no more compunction at thus hoodwinking Time than if he had been a customs-officer.
The village of Thessaly, which like a horizon encompassed most of the individuals whom we know, could tell little more than this of the months that had passed since Thanksgiving Day, now once again the holiday closest at hand. The seasons of rest and open-air amusement lay behind it, and in front was a vista made of toil. There had been many deaths, and still more numerous births, and none in either class mattered much save under the roof-tree actually blessed or afflicted. The year had been fairly prosperous, and the legislature had passed the bill which at New Year’s would enable the village to call itself a city.
Of the people with whom this story is concerned, there is scarcely more to record during this lapse of time.
Jessica Lawton was perhaps the one most conscious of change. At the very beginning of spring, indeed on the very day when Horace had his momentary fright in passing the shop, Miss Minster had visited her, had brought a reasonably comprehensive plan for the Girls’ Resting House, as she wanted it called, and had given her a considerable sum of money to carry out this plan. For a long time it puzzled Jessica a good deal that Miss Minster never came again. The scheme took on tangible form; some score of work-girls availed themselves of its privileges, and the result thus far involved less friction and more substantial success than Jessica had dared to expect. It seemed passing strange that Miss Minster, who had been so deeply enthusiastic at first, should never have cared to come and see the enterprise, now that it was in working order. Once or twice Miss Tabitha had dropped in, and professed to be greatly pleased with everything, but even in her manner there was an indefinable alteration which forbade questions about the younger lady.
There were rumors about in the town which might have helped Jessica to an explanation had they reached her. The village gossips did not fail to note that the Minster family made a much longer sojourn this year at Newport, and then at Brick Church, New Jersey, than they had ever done before; and gradually the intelligence sifted about that young Horace Boyce had spent a considerable portion of his summer vacation with them. Thessaly could put two and two together as well as any other community. The understanding little by little spread its way that Horace was going to marry into the Minster millions.
If there were repinings over this foreseen event, they were carefully dissembled. People who knew the young man liked him well enough. His professional record was good, and he had made a speech on the Fourth of July which pleased everybody except ’Squire Gedney; but then, the spiteful old “Cal” never liked anybody’s speeches save his own. Even more satisfaction was felt, however, on the score of the General. His son was a showy young fellow, smart and well-dressed, no doubt, but perhaps a trifle too much given to patronizing folks who had not been to Europe, and did not scrub themselves all over with cold water, and put on a clean shirt with both collar and cuffs attached, every morning. But for the General there was a genuine affection. It pleased Thessaly to note that, since he had begun to visit at the home of the Minsters, other signs of social rehabilitation had followed, and that he himself drank less and led a more orderly life than of yore. When his intimates jokingly congratulated him on the rumors of his son’s good fortune, the General tacitly gave them confirmation by his smile.
If Jessica had heard these reports, she might have traced at once to its source Miss Minster’s sudden and inexplicable coolness. Not hearing them, she felt grieved and perplexed for a time, and then schooled herself into resignation as she recalled Reuben Tracy’s warning about the way rich people took up whims and dropped them again, just as fancy dictated.
It was on the first day of November that the popular rumor as to Horace’s prospects reached her, and this was a day memorable for vastly more important occurrences in the history of industrial Thessaly.
The return of cold weather had been marked, among other signs of the season, by a renewed disposition on the part of Ben Lawton to drop in to the millinery shop, and sit around by the fire in the inner room. Ben came this day somewhat earlier than usual—the midday meal was in its preliminary stages of preparation under Lucinda’s red hands—and it was immediately evident that he was more excited over something that had happened outside than by his expectation of getting a dinner.
“There’s the very old Nick to pay down in the village!” he said, as he put his feet on the stove-hearth. “Heard about it, any of you?”
Ben had scarcely ascended in the social scale during the scant year that had passed, though the general average of whiteness in his paper collars had somewhat risen, and his hair and straggling dry-mud-colored beard were kept more duly under the subjection of shears. His clothes, too, were whole and unworn, but they hung upon his slouching and round-shouldered figure with “poor white” written in every misfitting fold and on every bagging projection. Jessica had resigned all hope that he would ever be anything but a canal boatman in mien or ambition, but her affection for him had grown rather than diminished; and she was glad that Lucinda, in whom there had been more marked personal improvements, seemed also to like him better.
No, Jessica said, she had heard nothing.
“Well, the Minster furnaces was all shut down this morning, and so was the work out at the ore-beds at Juno, and the men, boys, and girls in the Thessaly Company’s mills all got word that wages was going to be cut down. You can bet there’s a buzz around town, with them three things coming all together, smack!”
“I suppose so,” answered Jessica, still bending over her work of cleaning and picking out some plumes. “That looks bad for business this winter, doesn’t it?”
Ben’s relations with business, or with industry generally, were of the most remote and casual sort, but he had a lively objective interest in the topic.
“Why, it’s the worst thing that ever happened,” he said, with conviction. “There’s seven hundred men thrown out already” (the figure was really two hundred and twelve), “and more than a thousand more got to git unless they’ll work for starvation wages.”
“It seems very hard,” the girl made reply. The idea came to her that very possibly this would put an extra strain upon the facilities and financial strength of the Resting House.
“Hard!” her father exclaimed, stretching his hands over the stove-top; “them rich people are harder than Pharaoh’s heart. What do them Minsters care about poor folks, whether they starve or freeze to death, or anything?”
“Oh, it is the Minsters, you say!” Jessica looked up now, with a new interest. “Sure enough, they own the furnaces. How could they have done such a thing, with winter right ahead of us?”
“It’s all to make more money,” put in Lucinda. “Them that don’t need it’ll do anything to get it. What do they care? That Kate Minster of yours, for instance, she’ll wear her sealskin and eat pie just the same. What does it matter to her?”
“No; she has a good heart. I know she has,” said Jessica. “She wouldn’t willingly do harm to any one. But perhaps she has nothing to do with managing such things. Yes, that must be it.”
“I guess Schuyler Tenney and Hod Boyce about run the thing, from what I hear,” commented the father. “Tenney’s been bossing around since summer begun, and Boyce is the lawyer, so they say.”
Ben suddenly stopped, and looked first at Jessica, then at Lucinda. Catching the latter’s eye, he made furtive motions to her to leave the room; but she either did not or would not understand them, and continued stolidly at her work.
“That Kate you spoke about,” he went on stum-blingly, nodding hints at Lucinda to go away as he spoke, “she’s the tall girl, with the black eyes and her chin up in the air, ain’t she?”
“Yes,” the two sisters answered, speaking together.
“Well, as I was saying about Hod Boyce,” Ben said, and then stopped in evident embarrassment. Finally he added, confusedly avoiding Jessica’s glance, “‘Cindy, won’t you jest step outside for a minute? I want to tell your sister something—something you don’t know about.”
“She knows about Horace Boyce, father,” said Jessica, flushing, but speaking calmly. “There is no need of her going.”
Lucinda, however, wiped her hands on her apron, and went out into the store, shutting the door behind her. Then Ben, ostentatiously regarding the hands he held out over the stove, and turning them as if they had been fowls on a spit, sought hesitatingly for words with which to unbosom himself.
“You see,” he began, “as I was a-saying, Hod Boyce is the lawyer, and he’s pretty thick............